“We’ve gotten pretty far as just a bunch of kids.”
These high-school students organized a citywide school walkout to protest in-person classes in NYC. Here’s why ...
These high-school students organized a citywide school walkout to protest in-person classes in NYC. Here’s why ...
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00:00Concerned New York City teens putting down their pencils and leaving school at 1152 a.m. today for the NYC student walkout for COVID safety.
00:09We've seen a few messages saying, why would the mayor listen to us? We're just a bunch of kids.
00:24And I would say to that that we've gotten pretty far as just a bunch of kids. And I think we can get a lot farther.
00:31And I just like to encourage students and children to use their voices because it's more powerful than they think.
00:47We were all pretty upset that he wasn't taking any action on that.
00:50I was kind of complaining about that to my family, around my family. And my mom made a comment saying, oh, you know, why don't you do something about it?
01:00You can have a walkout or something like that. And I just kind of took that and ran.
01:12We announced the whole event on our Instagram. It was open to all New York City public schools.
01:17So we just kind of put the announcement out there. And from from there on, more students and more schools started joining in pretty quickly.
01:26And they kind of just got themselves together.
01:40Just genuinely do not feel safe in the school building anymore at this point.
01:46We're looking for New York City to temporarily close the schools down with a hybrid option for families that don't have access to child care,
01:55just so that we can stop closing the schools down for months on end.
02:14Since then, we've actually gotten an email from from representatives from his office, and we're in the process of setting up meetings to discuss further goals and planning for better COVID safety regulations at school.
02:35A lot of students missing from many of my classes, but for at least a few of them, I'll walk in and like half the classroom will be empty.
02:45I know Bronx Science had so many had such a big staff shortage that they had to put, I think, three classes in the auditorium at once and crowd them together on the stage.
03:04Students aren't only exposed at school, they're exposed on the commute to school, they're exposed while they're at school, they're exposed on the commute home.
03:14They're exposed at every point of their day. And it's not fair to put them at that much risk or their family members at that much risk.
03:24When we could have a remote option and completely avoid it.